Switch 'Y' spur."

The young engineer had been gone less than half an hour, and Lidgerwood
had scarcely finished reading his mail, when McCloskey opened the door.
Like Benson, the trainmaster also had the light of discovery in his eye.

"More thievery," he announced gloomily. "This time they have been
looting my department. I had ten or twelve thousand feet of high-priced,
insulated copper wire, and a dozen or more telephone sets, in the
store-room. Mr. Cumberley had a notion of connecting up all the Angels
departments by telephone, and it got as far as the purchasing of the
material. The wire and all those telephone sets are gone."

"Well?" said Lidgerwood, evenly. The temptation to take it out upon the
nearest man was still as strong as ever, but he was growing better able
to resist it.

"I've done what I could," snapped McCloskey, seeming to know what was
expected of him, "but nobody knows anything, of course. So far as I
could find out, no one of my men has had occasion to go to the
store-room for a week."

"Who has the keys?"

"I have one, and Spurlock, the line-chief, has one. Hallock has the
third."

"Always Hallock!" was the half-impatient comment. "I hope you don't
suspect him of stealing your wire."

McCloskey tilted his hat over his eyes, and looked truculent enough to
fight an entire cavalry troop.

"That's just what I do," he gritted. "I've got him dead to rights this
time. He was in that store-room day before yesterday, or rather night
before last. Callahan saw him coming out of there."

Lidgerwood sat back in his chair and smiled. "I don't blame you much,
Mac; this thing is getting to be pretty binding upon all of us. But I
think you are mistaken in your conclusion, I mean. Hallock has been
making an inventory of material on hand for the past week or more, and
now that I think of it, I remember having seen your wire and the
telephone sets included in his last sheet of telegraph supplies."

"There it goes again," said the trainmaster sourly. "Every time I get a
half-hitch on that fellow, something turns up to make it slip. But if I
had my way about twenty minutes I'd go and choke him till he'd tell me
what he has done with that wire."

Lidgerwood was smiling again.

"Try to be as fair to him as you can," he advised good-naturedly. "I
know you dislike him, and probably you have good reasons. But have you
stopped to ask yourself what possible use he could make of the stolen
material?"

Ag